A Coy Koi Carol
by Lionne6
Summary: Amy gets more than she expected when she researches Lucid Dreaming in an attempt to control her night terrors.
1. Life: What is it but a dream?

_I have no idea where I am going with this. However, sophomore efforts, as a rule, must suck. Therefore, I must write something that sucks to complete my sophomore effort and hopefully move onto bigger and better things. Yet, don't think for a moment this story doesn't amuse me. Not that I'm expecting it will amuse anyone else. I'm just confessing I'm a strange one and that it amuses me._

* * *

Her whole life, Amy had been like a possum, a nocturnal creature. She liked to stay up late into the night while everyone else went to sleep. When darkness fell, she did not have her mother there to nag her, nor schoolmates there to bully her, and she could be alone with a book, or her computer, or simply with her own thoughts. Night after night, she peacefully pursued knowledge and logic like an sailor at sea would follow the stars as they rose and sank from one horizon to the other.

Besides, the longer she stayed awake, the longer she could put off the night terrors she had been prone to since she was a child.

Tonight, Amy was curled up in bed with her laptop. She typed the words _Lucid Dreaming_ into the Google search field and hit return. Skipping past the Wikipedia entry, she found an entry titled: _The World of Lucid Dreaming_. She clicked on the text, murmuring to herself, "sounds promising." A webpage with a background of enticing blue clouds popped up on her screen.

Amy was skeptical about the font choices, and could not decipher what the palm tree graphics might have to do with dreaming, but she had long ago adapted to the fact that the Internet was not a place to apply high expectations for grammar or logic. She skimmed the site until she found a link for "Lucid Dreaming for Beginners," clicked it, and settled down to read. She spent the rest of the evening studying, with all due seriousness, the art of controlling her dreams.

Somewhere past one in the morning, Amy reached her limits, signaled by the strain and tiredness that overtook her eyes. Looking at the clock, she knew it was past her bedtime, so she closed her laptop and put it on the floor. Amy rolled over, curled up quietly, and put into practice the first tenants of Lucid Dreaming: thinking about the thing you wanted to dream about. The answer was so obvious she almost giggled to herself.

With deliberate slowness, Amy recalled all of the pieces of conversation she had shared that day with her boyfriend, Dr. Sheldon Cooper. She envisioned them in her head, gloating in private over each one, watching letters magically march across the screen of her computer or phone. She especially took time to replay each word that she'd heard spoken in his own voice. Somewhere in the midst of recounting his riveting lecture on bleach and its effectiveness on water spot removal on glass beakers, she fell asleep.

* * *

Amy smoothly rolled from her side to her back, her hand pressed against her eyes. For one of the few times in her life, she felt refreshed, and she stretched luxuriously against the wine colored satin sheets, letting out a soft hum of satisfaction as she felt the fabric caress her naked body.

_Naked body?_

Amy opened her eyes and beheld a wide and endless blue sky.

"Bon matin, ma petite intoxicating bijoux," purred a rich baritone from her immediate left.

Amy knew that voice. Her eyes tracked to the side, and she jerked up straight, clutching the satin sheets over her breasts as she surveyed the scrawny, pale chest of the man beside her.

"Howard?" She said, glancing at him and than around the room, which was not so much a room as it was a bed, floating in a tranquil pond lavishly dotted with water lilies and completely closed off from the rest of the world by curtains of graceful weeping willows. She glanced at Howard, and then glanced back at the trees, and then glanced over the side of the mattress at the fat golden koi fish swimming lazily in the crystal clear water. She did a brief self-analysis, and curiously did not feel as alarmed as she thought she should.

"Oh, yeah, you're dreaming," Howard said cheerfully, gazing at her through half-lidded and merry eyes. "Would you like a banana?" he asked seductively, pulling out a yellow fruit from beneath the covers.

"Absolutely not," she said, eying the fruit and then the lush and tranquil scenery. The mattress floated and turned slowly, adrift on the gentle currents of the pond. _Which was ridiculous_, Amy noted to herself, _as a pond would not have currents_. Reluctantly, she turned back to Howard. He smiled up at her lovingly, in a sickeningly sweet way she usually saw reserved for Bernadette.

"It's funny what happens when the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex goes offline, isn't it?" Howard said with a smile, placing an elbow on his pillow and propping his head up in his hand. "I really have to congratulate you on the idyllic beauty of your limbic system, Amy. I never knew you were such a romantic." He leaned forward, his voice turning seductive again, "We have that in common."

"Nonsense," Amy replied stoically, determined to shoot him down with the same brutality that Penny saved specifically for him. She looked at the water again, and considered trying to swim for it, but even as she did, the weeping willows seemed to shift gently towards the horizon, growing farther away even as the pond became larger. She turned back to Howard and inquired, "What are you doing here? Why am I here with you, specifically?" A water lily drifted past the mattress, and Howard scooped it up and placed it in her lap. "And why is this dream rife with blatant erotic symbolism?" She picked up the water lily and threw it back over the side of the mattress.

"You don't think that you have latent sexual feelings for me, Amy?" Howard asked, smiling up at her so serenely she wasn't sure if he was in earnest or mocking her.

"Definitely not," Amy replied. Carefully tucking the satin sheets under her arms, she slowly lay back down and watched puffy white clouds in the form of valentine hearts float one by one across the sky.

"Yeah, I figured you didn't, but a man has to ask." Howard pushed back part of the sheets to reveal a small wooden bowl, which he offered to her with a chipper flourish. "Cherries?"

Amy put her hands over her eyes, "Dear amygdala," she said, speaking to the walnut-sized organ of her brain that was definitely in control of this particular dream, "I'd really like to wake up now."

"Oh no," Howard said sweetly, reaching over to gently remove her hands from her eyes. "You and I have things to talk about, ma bijoux. You see, tonight you're going to be visited by four ghosts. Or spirits. Or basically your friends as I'm going to send them to you to, um, torture you for a bit." He paused to think about it, and then said, "It's like A Christmas Carol by Dickens, but not as spooky. Or it might seem spooky to you, when you see Raj dancing naked with a monkey. Or maybe not so much spooky as deeply disturbing to the point you'll want to gouge your eyes out. But anyway! You might be starting to catch my drift about how this evening is going to turn out for you." He popped a cherry into his mouth and chewed on it with a smile, wriggling his eyebrows at her suggestively.

"Wait," Amy said, watching Howard spit out the cherry stone towards the water. A koi fish broke the placid surface and caught it in its mouth the way a dog might catch a Frisbee in the park, "….Why?" She found her brain sluggishly trying to find logic in her current situation, and failed. "Dickens novel was a Victorian-era morality tale about self-redemption. Did I do something wrong?"

"No," Howard said, grinning as he started to peel another banana he had found under the silky sheets. He looked at Amy dead-on and said merrily, "We just like to fuck with you."

"And by we," Amy inquired, "You mean the parts of my brain responsible for dreaming that are currently manifesting themselves as you?"

"We sort of see this _Lucid Dreaming_ idea as cheating, Amy. You were hoping for a sex dream with Sheldon, and cheating in your efforts to get it. We've been giving you night terrors for years - you really think we were going to give you your wildest fantasy that easily?" Howard took a bite of banana, and then spread his arm out expansively, "Instead we're giving you all this. Beauty, romance," he wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively. "Naked men in your bed at long last."

Amy whimpered.

Howard leaned over and placed a kiss on her temple. "Enjoy," he purred in her ear, even as the surface of the pond started to ripple, and a familiar chiming sound echoed in the air. The bed seemed to finally sink into the water's depths, and Amy found herself drowning. She flailed her arms, trying to swim for the surface, but the koi fish swam around her, faster and faster, turning into a golden maelstrom that sucked her deeper into it's depths, their laughter ringing like electronic bells.

She twisted helplessly in the water, opening her mouth to scream, her lungs filling with liquid instead. Suddenly, she felt herself hit something with a hard thump.

* * *

Amy opened her eyes, her screams fading as she stared at the familiar ceiling of her own apartment from its floor. One leg was still on the bed, twisted up in her sheets. Her head ached, but there was a reason she had picked an apartment with a bedroom with thick carpeting. Her cellphone trilled again, and she groped on the top of her bedside table, pulling it down to where she lay prone on the floor. She opened her text messaging, expecting to find a morning greeting from Sheldon. Instead, she found Bernadette's name and happy photograph staring back at her. She tapped the screen to open her friend's message.

_Amy, _it read_, I love you very much and you know that. But if you continue dreaming of being naked in bed with my husband, I am going to have to kill you slowly by putting flesh-eating bacteria in your Cheerios. _

The phone pinged again. A new message appeared from Bernadette_: Oh, and have a nice day! _

A koi fish leapt out of the sea of shag carpet, and she watched it flip cheerfully over her stomach and vanish with a ring of ripples into the floor on the other side of her naked body.

A smiling face topped with brown curls popped up upside down above hers. "Good morning, Amy," Leonard said, dropping a sweet and familiar kiss on the tip of her nose. He mussed her hair, and walked away, carrying a skillet that was still sizzling with bacon.

The air smelled like melting butter, bacon, and fresh hay. Hay? Amy pulled herself upright, and found herself on clean, white linen sheets, in a barn. A chicken slowly strutted by, bobbing its head as it pecked after seedlings on the floor. Amy stared at the chicken blankly until the trilling of the cellphone in her hand brought her back. She looked at the screen, and she had a new message from…Howard.

_Yeah,_ it read, _we're still fucking with you. Love, your brain._

The phone trilled again.

_PS. We hear Leonard is a magnificant beast. Maybe you'll get lucky! Enjoy!_

Amy looked up at the wooden beams of the barn ceiling and demanded to know, "Why me?" Then she flopped back into the soft pillows and attempted to mentally prepare for what was coming next. Instead, Howard's laughter chortled back at her from the barn's rafters.


	2. Lingering in a Golden Gleam

Leonard lifted up the white sheets and slipped between them, naked as the day he was born, and Amy couldn't help but admire his smooth chest and defined shoulders. Sheldon was right – he really was a perfectly formed miniature human being. Her fingers twitched as she eyed a curl that had fallen over his forehead, curious, for a brief moment, to push it back and maybe run her fingers through it for awhile, letting them eventually glide down his neck, over his strong shoulder…Surely Penny wouldn't mind...

"COCK-A-Doodle-DOOooooooooooooo!" crowed a rooster from somewhere in the rafters. Amy literally jumped several inches off the bed in fright, every hair on her body standing on end from the shock. She grabbed the sheets, tucked them up to her chin, and guiltily buried deeper under the covers.

"Doodle a cock, do? Do a cock, doodle?" Leonard said to her sweetly, offering a white plate filled up with acid green scrambled eggs, green ham, and green sausage. Which was odd because Amy had been sure she smelled bacon. "Would you care to suck my noodle?"

"I would not care to suck a cock, I would not to care suck you, Doc. I will not, cannot, should not, won't. Do not ask me, please ask me don't." Amy replied, looking from the plate to his face.

"That's a lie, a lie, that is," Leonard said, picking up a green sausage from the plate and holding it out towards her mouth, "You might not want mine, but you surely want his. Your boyfriend, tall and lanky, with whom you'd like some hanky panky."

Leonard lifted an eyebrow at her knowingly, holding out the green sausage to her mouth. He waited for her to take a bite.

Amy pressed her lips together tightly, refusing from the core of her being all three things she was currently feeling compelled to do: confirm the truth that might lie behind Leonard's statement, take a bite of his sausage, and continue talking in Dr. Seuss riddles. Yet, try as she might, her brain would not stop coupling every thought in her head with nonsense rhymes. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to think pleading thoughts towards her amygdala, but instead she blurted out, "Wanton lust and all your victims, please leave my limbic systems!"

For a long moment after that, everything was quiet. She felt a sweet summer breeze waft softly against her temple, and slowly pried one eye open, only to see Leonard looking down at her with a cocked eyebrow.

_Damn._

"That was terrible," Leonard said placidly, "You only have one limbic system, and your attempt to pluralize it in order to find the rhyme betrays all you know as a neurobiologist. You should be ashamed." He took a bite of the sausage, since Amy was still refusing it, and chewed on it thoughtfully. "Then again, I concede there's not a lot that rhymes with system. System…piston? Cataclysm? Hmm. No, those are all just slant rhymes. Well, I guess you did the best you could." He smiled at her, and she had the notion that it was in forgiveness, and for some reason she appreciated his kindness in doing so and felt herself relax. Another part of her brain was kicking herself, but then, Amy suspected, every part of her brain was currently at war with each other. Slowly, with one arm holding the white sheet to her chest, she lifted herself up and rested against the pillows and wood grain headboard.

"So." She said firmly and carefully, relieved to no longer feel compelled to speak like a Dr. Seuss book, "What are we doing in a barn?" She watched a sounder of swine bounce past the bed in red sequin bowler hats and matching tap dance shoes. They formed a chorus line, and, after a brief rendition of the Can Can, one belched out, "There's no place like home!" They all clicked their heels in unison, doffed their hats in salute, and vanished into thin air. While Amy felt vaguely jealous that they had all managed to get out while she stayed behind, she was quite impressed with the performance and began applauding. When no one else joined in, she stopped.

She glanced over at Leonard, who was chewing on his green eggs and ham, and decided try a slightly different tactic. "This is a lovely barn. Elegant. Rustic! Clean?" She curled and uncurled her toes slowly, clasping her hands over her knees, which she tried to subtly make sure where locked together. Hoping for an answer, she looked at Leonard, but he was busy eating.

Amy decided to try again, saying, "I'd love to know what we're doing here."

That seemed to stir something in the naked man lying next to her. She stole a glance in a certain direction, pondering the outline of things beneath thin sheets as he spoke up, "Well, do you remember that time where all of us guys got together to play Star Wars video games for the whole weekend, and you got upset and went over to see Penny? As the two of you were getting drunk and you were moping about Sheldon, Penny told you about that 'wild stallion' conversation we had to try to cheer you up?"

"Yes?" Amy replied. A pygmy goat leapt up onto the bed between their legs, settled down like a cat between their hips, and seemed to fall asleep. Amy glanced at it suspiciously, but felt comforted that at least its horns were now between herself and Leonard's lower body. She looked back at the man beside her, and fell back to listening to him ramble on.

"Well, you've been considering how Penny managed to put a saddle on me, and harness my affections, as it were, because you'd like to do the same thing to Sheldon. In fact, that's what lead you to come up with that experiment you've been working on him in the first place." Leonard took another bite of sausage, and sucked a smear of grease off his fingertip quickly before going on, "Excellent call on that Junior Train Conductor thing. That was inspired." He paused and gave her a warm smile, saying earnestly, You're so smart, Amy."

Amy fixed Leonard in one long, steely gaze, and then said firmly, "Leonard, I appreciate the depth of your feelings for me, but no amount of flattery is going to convince me to sleep with you, so please stop trying to seduce me. It is never going to happen, and frankly, you're embarrassing yourself." She lifted herself even more upright, starting to feel something like herself again.

_It had needed to be said. It didn't sound ridiculous. _

_Did it?_

She shot a glance out of the corner of her eye at the goat, just to make sure he was following.

"I wasn't the one trying to analyze the length of my penis beneath this bed sheet not two seconds ago," Leonard objected.

"I did figure out the length of your penis," Amy answered, "Within hours of first meeting you." She paused, and then added, "I told you that I'm very good at spatial reasoning." Amy realized she had to stick with this, as, slowly, she was starting to feel like she might be gaining the upper hand in the conversation again.

Leonard went silent again, and feeling triumphant, Amy took a piece of green ham from the plate. She glanced around the barn again, noting for the first time that the vast, rough-hewn doors were flung wide open, and beyond lay a green meadow bursting with clover and apple trees in white, frothy bloom. She tilted her head so she could see out further into the landscape, and as she suspected, a vivid rainbow arched from one horizon to another. She sighed. The grass really was greener in Penny's world.

One thing was bothering her, though. "If you're a wild stallion, what are we doing in a barn? Shouldn't you be with Penny, running wild, you know…out there?" She gestured freely to the meadow, forgetting about the green ham in her hand. It flew out of her fingers, but luckily the goat woke up just in time to catch it in his teeth. He gulped it down in one swallow and then went back to sleep. It was just as Amy had feared – her insular cortex was here to spy on her limbic system, and now there was a strong chance she'd actually remember this dream when she woke up. As if she didn't feel socially awkward enough, now she was going to have trouble looking Leonard in the eye for weeks.

"Amy," Leonard noted, "I think prolonged exposure to Sheldon is threatening to turn you from prudish to full-on neurotic. Please try to relax, and stop feeling guilty about being naked in bed with me. Every time you tense up, we're going to slip back into that Dr. Seuss nonsense."

Amy knit her brow and tried to remain skeptical. The presence of her insular cortex was helping her keep a cooler head, to connect with her more logical side - or, of course, with her most deep seeded anxieties. _Which was it?_ She tried to hold onto that even as Leonard picked up his narrative. He said, "Now, as for why you and I are in a barn, there's several possible explanations. The first is that, this is your dream, and you perceive me as completely tamed, saddled and bridled by the golden princess you call your bestie. Despite the various flavors of imagination provided by your hippocampus, even your occipital cortex isn't capable of picturing me outside of a domesticated setting."

Amy pondered that for a moment, and then nodded slowly in acceptance. There seemed no reason to ruin the moment, or prolong the agony anyway, with idle chit chat, but something was bothering her.

Amy said, "I do see you as romantically pair bonded to Penny, in which case, what are the two of us doing naked in bed together, eating green eggs and ham as if we're luxuriating in some après-coitus glow? Lingering over an intimate meal in bed, even eating from the same plate? Shouldn't I see you as romantically unavailable? Especially since I'm not sexually attracted to you?"

Leonard pulled back his right eyebrow slowly, and shifted a little under the covers, turning his body towards her fully. "You're not?"

"No. Not. Usually." Amy's eyes flickered this way and that wildly. "I mean, ever. No," she added for emphasis, her eyes trailing upwards towards the ceiling even as she felt her self-control and logic start to bleed away, rapidly. She quickly blathered on, "I would not like sex, Leonard, here nor there. I would not like sex anywhere. I would not like it in a barn. I would not like it on a farm. I would not like it in this bed, I absolutely refuse to give you head." She gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth, eyes widening in surprise.

"Oh, and you were doing so well," Leonard said with a sigh, adjusting his shoulders as he answered her back. "Wouldn't you? Couldn't you? Don't be a coward. Loosen up or you have to go back to Howard."

At that, there was the clip clop of horse hooves on the barn's wooden floor. A shaggy miniature pony, colored a horrid shade of maroon, sauntered into view. Riding on it bare back, and with a jaunty smile, was Howard. He was wearing a black cowboy hat with matching black cowboy boots. Other than the maroon dickey around his neck, he was also naked.

"Howdy, ma'am. Leonard," Howard drawled, grabbing the brim of his hat and brandishing it with a flourish as he mock bowed to them both. Balanced on top of his head was a fish bowl containing a golden koi fish, and it was leaning against the bowl's rim. The fish held a cigarette in his fins with undeniable hauteur, and blew smoke rings in the shape of cloudy hearts in her direction.

Amy stared for a long, long moment at Howard, his maroon miniature horse, and the smoking fish. She turned back to Leonard, whispering quietly, "I will do anything you want." Leonard smiled at her, and Howard, his tacky horse, and his smoking koi fish, vanished into the same thin air that the chorus line of swine had earlier. Amy pulled the sheets up to the tip of her nose, staring at Leonard with wide eyes. _Was this really how she was going to lose her virginity? _She thought.

"No!" Leonard said, laughing out loud.

_How did he know what I was thinking?_ Amy wondered, shocked.

"Because this is a dream," Leonard explained, pulling a fork out from beneath the sheets. He began loading it up with green scrambled eggs. "And I'm just a manifestation of your mind. When you think inside your amygdala, the rest of your amygdala can still hear you." He took a bite of his eggs and reflected, "That should be a proverb or something. You should write that down. You know, when you wake up."

"When is _that_ going to happen? Oh, dear amygdala, please let me wake up now." Amy spoke aloud, unable to keep the helplessness out of her tone of voice. She curled up into a tighter, naked ball under the sheet, withering slowly as indecision and confusion seemed to settle into her spirit.

Leonard simply started laughing. Somewhere from the rafters, Howard joined in. Amy closed her eyes and turned over, burying her face into the pillows. She felt herself starting to sink, even while the scent of fresh hay and green eggs and ham became overpowered by the strong, pungent odor of manure.

_Yes_, Amy thought, _now that's the proper metaphor. _The goat snuggled up against her legs, laid its head on her thigh, and looked at her with big blue eyes that seemed positively dewy with sympathy. She reached down to stroke its head, staring back into its eyes, and somehow felt better and less alone. Maybe everything wasn't going to be so bad. It was only a dream - what did she have to feel guilty about anyway?

As if he knew what she was thinking (_well, technically he does,_ Amy reflected), Leonard slid his hand slowly down the full expanse of her back, pushing away the sheet, and Amy felt a hot flush spread through her body, radiating from his touch. He placed a firm kiss between her shoulder blades, even as his hand curled over her elbow, slid down her arm, and gently circled around her wrist. _Did she feel guilty, or did she feel mad with curiosity?_ The goat bleated at her sadly, and it sounded strangely like the word, "Both."

"Come with me, oh come and see," Leonard murmured in her ear, "We'll eat brie and drink some tea. I'm just teasing, teasing I be, you don't have to have sex with me. However, you're now my abductee, as I am the first ghost of three – or four, or more, it's your brains call - have one ghost or have them all! Nevertheless, this'll be fun! It will! It's true! You and me, me and you - we're off on a jolly jaunt or two. Wrap that sheet around your breasts and don't feel so dang depressed! Now we're off, off we are, guided by a silver star. Chin up, don't be so stressed. Amy sour, Amy sweet, snap your fingers and tap your feet. My Amy, Shamy, vixen, dear, my sweet with a mind so wise and queer, this is the path to Sheldon, it's true, so buck up, it's what's good for you."

Again, Leonard kissed her between her shoulder blades, and as she slowly rolled over to look at him in confusion, he kissed the curve of her neck and then her mouth, pressing his lips against hers firmly even as he caught the edges of the sheet, using them to yank her to her feet. He spun her around in a twinkle, and the white sheet flared and resettled around her body as a sheath dress.

_Well, that's elegant,_ Amy thought dryly. _I would not have thought Leonard capable of this.  
_

"Then you really underestimate me, Amy," Leonard said. He took her hand, and she noticed he was wearing a gleaming white toga, and had a circlet of golden laurel leaves crowning his head. However, for the first time since they had gotten together, he had his glasses on. She lifted an eyebrow at him in curiosity.

"Well," he said, "I have to be able to see where we're going. Ghosts can still have ocular problems."

"You're dressed as a Greek God," Amy pointed out. "Not a ghost."

"Yes, well, blame your neocortex and thalamus," Leonard answered, "When the prefrontal cortex shuts down, there's nothing to give them logic or reason, and they tend to go a little crazy. Besides, why are you complaining? We look hot."

Amy thought about that, and then lifted her arm and looked at herself as best she could, and then she looked at Leonard. "It's true," she said, "This is really a good look for us."

"Oh, your insular cortex is SO glad you approve," Leonard replied, gesturing towards the goat. It wagged its little stump of a tail. "Come on, it's time to find the point of this dream. Though it's been fun, we're hopelessly digressing."

She gazed across the wide, green meadow, and then looked back at the goat, who had settled back down to go to sleep.

"Bye," she said to it, waving a little. For some reason, she was loathe to leave it behind.

It woke up enough to squint at her out of one eye and said, "Don't blame me for this, woman! This is all your fault!"

She blinked, but Leonard reassuringly squeezed her hand and lead her away. "Don't mind him," he said. He looked over his shoulder and yelled, "She was thinking it's a beautiful brain_scape_, not _scape_goat, you oversensitive ass!"

"I am the insula," the goat bleated back, "And the insula will not be insulted! I integrate her mind and body – she wouldn't even be human without me! She wouldn't even be a _mammal_!" The goat snorted after their retreating figures, and huffed as it settled back on the bed to pout. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, Amy reckoned. She and Leonard had only taken a few steps into the meadow when she heard its hooves clattering behind them on the barn floor.

"Wait," it said anxiously, "I'm coming too." It bounded over to Leonard's other side, and rubbed its horned head against his thigh.

"Oh, alright," Leonard replied, turning to look at Amy. "Rational thinking cannot be separated from feelings and emotions, even in your dreams, and vice versa. He'll have to come. Do you mind if he tags along?"

Amy shook her head no. The two of them walked, the goat hopped, and wooden floor beneath them changed into glowing yellow bricks. The three of them wandered down a golden road that spiraled off into the distance.

"Don't worry," Leonard said, still holding her hand as the tiny pygmy goat bounded happily around them in circles, occasionally bleating, "look at me!" before doing a back flip. "Despite your concerns, this is not going to turn into a Wizard of Oz dream. Anymore than the dancing swine already referenced, anyway. I mean, if Raj came bouncing through the meadow dressed up at the Cowardly Lion, how completely cliché would that be?"

"Cowardly Lion?" Amy wondered, "Ah. My brain is associating his selective mutism, pathological shyness, and general fear of women with cowardice, so of course he would correlate most strongly to that character."

"That is correct on all counts," Leonard agreed. "Don't worry, you've only briefly entertained this idea in your brain and your subconscious has already dismissed it. Well, technically, the manifestation of your brain that's currently adopted the caricature of Howard has dismissed the idea because it's capable of so much worse." Leonard chuckled and gave her hand a happy swing, and if he said the most hilarious thing in the world. "But seriously, Amy, no matter how much you love them, and would like to bio-engineer your own barrel of flying monkeys, you have got to stop falling asleep while watching that movie."

As Leonard spoke, the gold bricks blurred together and began to lose their color, as did the blue sky, and the receding green meadow. Indeed, the colors of the entire world seemed to fade away slowly, until she and Leonard were walking down the streets of Pasadena. A gritty Pasadena, painted black, white, and a hundred thousand different hues of grey.

Amy knew where Leonard was taking her.

* * *

_Author's Note: No, I'm not high. But I am super, thanks for asking!_


	3. Ever drifting down the stream

_Oh my. You made it to chapter 3. What are you still doing here? - Lio_

* * *

Amy knew that the oldest part of the brain was its stem, and from it came pulses of electricity in the night, tingling through the brain and making it change channels. What a pulse this was, this brilliant light she and Leonard had walked through. It had knocked the sweet little goat right out of the picture. Amy sighed as the two of them entered into a black and white world in which sprawled, in exaggerated, monolithic, monstrous size, the most awful place in the world.

The school playground.

The playground was drawn in shades of grey, and the children ran and played around them in silent slow motion. Their mouths seemed to form laughter as they slid down silver slides and climbed silver monkey bars, but the very air itself was dead and silent. There was no sound, and the children's hair and clothes seemed to float about their tiny, frail, flying forms as if they moved underwater. It took eons, it seemed, for a ball to be thrown, to be caught, or for a child to swing from one silver ring to the next, just like the way this half hour used to drag on for a painful eternity when she was a child.

Leonard lead her by the hand down the long strip of cracked concrete on which were painted all the frameworks for various games – hopscotch, kickball, four square. Faded lines painted in white, lines in which others found meaning and delight, played out their games, and created friendships. Lines which were never more than a source of puzzlement and pain for Amy. White stripes and squares, boundaries in which other children played passed through with bewildering ease, but which always edged her out.

She glanced at Leonard, who had also fallen silent. He turned to her, and the pained look on his face matched her own. They turned back to stare silently at the comical world, Jurassic in size, looming around them.

At first it seemed like radio static, but then the air sizzled with words spoken with a crackling edge, as if being filtered through an electronic device.

"Look at her," crackled a childish voice, "Look at her."

Amy and Leonard turned their heads, seeing the one spot of color on the landscape: a tiny girl with a shiny brunette head, curled up inside a silver tower, wearing a little olive green cardigan, denim skirt, and yellow tights with brown Mary Janes. She had a thick book in her lap, and was concentrating on reading its pages, oblivious to the world around her. Amy felt her heart contract painfully.

"Yes, look at her," crackled the voice of another curious child. "Why won't she play with us?"

Around Amy echoed a chorus, whispering the words, "Why won't she play with us? Why won't she play with us?" Little children popped out on the toys, peering down at the little brunette girl who payed them no heed, peering at her curiously, tilting their head like a flock of little birds.

"Why won't she play with us?"

"She's the smart one," came a voice, followed by, "she's the teacher's pet," by another.

"Why won't she play with us?"

"She's the smart one."

"The smart one."

"The smart one?"

"Amy, Amy, Amy," they all called, some sweetly, some curiously, their words still laced with static, as if they were calling from far down a telephone line.

"Play with us, play with us, play with us," they chanted in soft whispers. "Amy, come play."

But the little girl, in all her colors, would not pay attention. She flipped a page in her book, and used one finger to push her heavy glasses up her long nose. Amy watched the child, and then glanced around at the curious faces of the children, on whom none of the malice she expected seemed to exist. She glanced at Leonard, and wanted to say something, but now both of them seemed stricken silent.

"Amy, come play," seethed the whispers again. The girl continued to ignore them, or perhaps didn't hear. A boy picked up a rock, and threw it at her, hitting the back of her book. He started laughing, and called, "Come play!" but the little girl, when she looked up, only seemed stricken with horror. She pushed back with her heels, burrowing deeper back into her silver tower, hugging the book tightly to her chest. Another boy picked up a rock, throwing it at the tower, making it clang with a deep ring off the tower in which the little girl cowered. "Come play!" he demanded, but the little girl only looked more terrified, and began to cry. Then Amy herself began to cry, and she felt a tug on her hand as Leonard pulled her away.

* * *

Another pulse from the brain stem, another flash of bright light, and the sound of wings fluttering as if she was being carried away in the arms of an angel. Around her body, things felt soft, and Amy curled up deeper under the satin covers and continued to cry, even as the koi fish began to jump in and out of the clear pond waters, flashing and arching like the balls of a juggler, looking like smudges of gold through her tears.

"Tissue?" Howard said gently, holding out a box. Amy grabbed one and started dabbing at her eyes and cheeks. She glanced downwards and, seeing as she was naked again, made sure to tuck the wine colored sheets tightly around her chest. She started to sniffle as her tears slowly dried up.

The jumping koi fish broke into pairs, and started waltzing like Fred and Ginger, doing an excellent rendition of their famous "Top Hat" number on their nebulous fins. Amy watched them dip one another as they gurgled sweetly to each other, "Hhhhhgggggurlgeaven, we'rrrrrgle in hhhhggggglurgggeaven…and my hhhhrhrrhrhearrrrglurglettt beats so I ccccgugglrgle barbrgrgrgrgrarely speeeegurgle-eak!" The male koi fish spun around their partners so quickly that they turned into a golden blur, and then they all fainted in rapture, and sunk down beneath the flat crystal surface of the pond again. The weeping willows lifted their branches and rustled in gentle applause.

Amy started to hum the tune softly, and the mattress drifted along, turning in its aimless circles.

"And you say you're not a romantic, my hypnotic little Cherie," Howard said.

Amy turned over to look at him. He was dressed up in a skunk suit, and he purred at her, "A-a-ahhh. Le pussy ferocious…le sigh." Howard light a cigarette and blew smoke rings lazily towards the sky.

Amy eyed him up and down, and didn't feel half as alarmed as she considered she should be. Howard dressed in a skunk suit was a definite improvement over the naked version. She inquired, "Where's Leonard?"

Howard gestured to the air above Amy's head, and Amy looked up and saw Leonard's curly head smiling down at her. She realized she was lying up against his bare chest, and sighed. She said sarcastically, "Ah, both of you at the same time. How lovely."

"It is, isn't it?" Howard agreed. He pulled out a pretty bottle from his skunk suit, and spritzed her with a mist of perfume that smelled like bacon. "So, ma bijoux, what did you learn?" He propped up his head, complete with skunk hood, on his hand and looked at her with an interested smile.

"Did I learn something?" Amy inquired, glancing up at Leonard.

"I hope so," Leonard replied. He lifted a lock of her hair and twirled it between his fingers, "Otherwise I just wasted a lot of time I could have used to have a wet dream about Penny."

"Oh, sorry," Amy replied, reaching out to take a cherry from the bowl Howard was offering. She bit into it lightly, and chewed as she tried to think about it. She said slowly, "Those children didn't seem to hate me. They…wanted me to play with them. They were…trying to get my attention. They didn't see me as…" she drifted off.

"A nerd?" Howard inquired.

"Moron?" Leonard asked.

"Loser? Dingbat? Dimwit? Dork? Wimp? Weirdo? Freaky geek?" They interjected, one right after the other.

"No," Amy conceded, starting to curl up tighter, but stopping as she felt her flesh rubbing against Leonard's. She threw the rest of the cherry towards the water. A koi fish, wearing a bowler hat, splashed up and caught it in his mouth, tipped his hat, and gurgled the words, "Thank you." He then sank back down into the water again.

Amy cleared her throat, and said in a low tone, "They didn't seem to think I was that bad. They…they seemed like they were trying to engage me in social activities with them." She paused, noting absently, "But that was such a good book - _Consciousness Explained, _by Daniel Dennett. You know, he postulated that the brain consists of a bundle of semi-autonomous, individually "stupid" components, each with a simple task that–"

"Spare us, Amy," Howard interrupted. He snapped his fingers at her once, "Focus."

"Your brain in your head, your head in your brain," Leonard began, "Use one or the other to help you explain. A lesson you learned, a lesson you saw. Analyze the data and be quick on the draw."

Amy thought back to Dickens, trying to recall the plot to _A Christmas Carol._ She said slowly, "The ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge the events in his past that caused him to become who he was, and created his hatred of Christmas." She paused, and then continued softly, "So I became the friendless nerd that I was because I alienated myself from other children in order to pursue my intellectual interests? And when in fact they were trying to get my attention and engage me in their activities, I turned away from them in the belief that they were teasing and torturing me? I believed that I was an outcast, and I behaved as one, and so I became one?"

Howard and Leonard exchanged an impressed glance.

"That's not bad," Howard said.

"She's good, I've said, said I, she's hot," Leonard answered, "A little fool we have here not. One thought, two thoughts, three thoughts, four – where are we, Howard, are you keeping score?"

Howard just eyed Leonard for a long moment before saying, "Okay, that's getting annoying. You don't have to do that any more."

"Oh, thank god," Leonard said, breathing a sigh of relief. He stroked Amy's hair, even as she buried into him, lost in thought. He looked down at her curiously, and then glanced back at Howard. "Hey. You have a banana?"

Howard pulled one from under the sheets with a cheeky grin. "Do you really even have to ask?" He began to peel it slowly, giving Amy a long and smoldering look as he did so. She looked at him in confusion, but slowly started to catch his drift.

"No," she said, eying him and then the fruit.

"Yavo," Howard replied.

"I don't think so, Howard," chimed a pretty, female voice from somewhere in the sky.

The next thing Amy knew, she was falling down a well to the sound of Penny's bell-like laughter. She landed in the water with a splash, and as she tried to kick her legs, she found them caught up in something, something that was dragging her down. She kicked more violently, wrestling against the water with her arms, and suddenly felt a hard thump on her back and the sound of bells blaring anxiously in the air.

* * *

Amy opened her eyes, and stared up at her dresser and lamp from the floor. She glanced at the clock, which was blaring its alarm, its red light blinking "6:00" over and over. Closing her eyes again, Amy groaned and groped blindly for the snooze button. The alarm fell silent, but felt strangely moist. She pulled the clock off her nightstand, opened her eyes, and looked wordlessly at the golden fish she held in her hand.

"Are you a hedgehog?" the koi fish asked her. "I was dreaming of being eaten by an awful hedgehog."

"I'm not a hedgehog," Amy promised the fish.

"Ah," it sighed softly, "Then hold me." It reached out its little filmy fins and gave Amy a hug, resting its head contentedly on her chest. Amy let it rest there, and used one fingertip to stroke its scaly head.

"Poor fishy," she said. "I was having a bad dream too."

"Mmm," the fish murmured drowsily, "Yes well, if you thought the idea of having group sex with Howard and Leonard was bad, you should see what's coming."

Amy froze.

The little fish started to positively gurgle with giggles, and suddenly the bed around Amy grew fur, and then it started to buckle and bounce along at a hard and awkward pace.

"Wheee!" said the fish.

Suddenly, the furry white bed seemed to fly, and the air turned into a prism of rainbows, as dewdrops of mist clung to Amy's face.

Amy looked down, and found herself facing the wrong way on a runaway unicorn. She twisted her body to try to look over her shoulder at where they were going. She bounced wildly on the unicorn's back, sure that the next leap would send her flying through the rainbow space. She put one hand on the unicorn's rump, but found nothing to hold onto, and she refused to let go of her little fishy friend.

"Where are we going?" Amy asked the fish, but when she looked down, it had turned into a large grey brain, dotted with tiny tumors. She gasped and threw it away in horror, even as the unicorn alit on ground Amy could not see through the mist of rainbows pressing around her like a London fog. The unicorn started to walk, and, turning its delicate and beautiful head, spoke to Amy over it's shoulder.

"That's right, Amy," it said in Penny's voice. "Relax! You think too much. Leave that prefrontal cortex offline, and let's go have some fun with your hippocampus!"

At that moment, a hippo, wearing a pink tutu and holding a gleaming magic wand with a star at the tip, came twirling through the mist. "Bippity bobbity BOO!" She cried, whacking Amy hard on her nose with her wand. Amy fell, sliding off the unicorns back, landing on something leafy to the sound of Penny's laughter.

_What in the world was she in for now?_

* * *

When Amy came around, rubbing at the tip of her nose in consternation, she found herself in a bed made of heather and mint leaves, lodged up high in a sweet pine tree. She looked down at herself, and then sighed. Naked again, of course. She glanced over, and saw Penny, her legs stretched in front of her, leaning back on the palms of her hands, naked and joyous as a jaybird. Penny whistled four soft notes, and little colorful birds began to alight on the branches near them and twitter back in a happy harmony. Amy brought her knees to her chest and curled her arms around them, feeling slightly more covered. She considered Penny's physical perfection, and then glancing down at her own limbs and made some comparisons. In her opinion, Amy did not find that she came out favorably.

"I can only imagine what I'm going to learn now," she muttered darkly to herself. A little gold bird perched on her shoulder, warbling a merry song into her ear.

"Hey Ames!" Penny said, turning to give Amy a wide grin, "Check it out. You finally got me naked with you!" She laughed, and flopped back on the bed, "Could I be anymore of a damn Disney Princess here in your amygdala? This is absurd. You cannot possibly see me this way in real life." Penny snapped her fingers, and pointed at Amy, "It's time we had a talk, chica. I'm the spirit of…um…you know, from that book. Wait, am I a ghost, a spirit? Or does it matter?" She paused, and touched a fingertip to her lip as she got lost deep in thought.

"We're going to have a talk?" Amy said, hoping to bring Penny's attention back to herself.

"Yeah, but about what?" Penny drawled, furrowing her brow. "I can't quite seem to grasp what I'm doing here."

_Neither can I_, Amy thought. _Unless it's to show me all that I don't have._

Penny started to laugh again. "Oh, but Amy, you do!" she exclaimed. At Amy's surprised expression, Penny added, "You're still inside your amygdala, so I can still hear you. I think Leonard explained that before. Hey," Penny reached out a hand and tickled Amy under her arm, "How is Leonard? He's a sexy guy without his shirt on, isn't he? Ah," Penny fell back in the bed, and the air filled with the sweet smell of mint, "I'm telling you, Amy, we're lucky girls."

Amy paused, unsure of what to say. Penny sat up suddenly.

"Oh hey! I just remembered! I'm supposed to teach you something. I am..." Penny furrowed her brow and looked up at the sky, "I'm supposed to parallel the ghost of Christmas Present. Present." She pursed her lips. "How am I going to do this then."

"Um, perhaps you could...show me how things are in the present?" Amy inquired.

Penny snapped her fingers. "Damn, bestie, you are BRILLIANT!" She smiled widely. "Alright then, off we go!"

The bed beneath them collapsed, and Amy began to fall quickly, the pine branches scratching her naked body, but instead of pain, Amy only felt tickled. She closed her eyes and began twisting, unable to stop laughing, until she suddenly heard Bernadette say, "I have it! Right here in this petri dish! I swear to God, Penny, if she dreams of Howard one more time!"

"Shush," Penny replied, "She doesn't mean any harm, you wildebeest. Now," she held up a pair of bright pink pumps with red flowers on them, "What do think of these shoes? Worth renting out my womb to a gay couple, or not?"

Amy looked around. She, Bernadette and Penny were in a shoe shop.


	4. Dreaming as the Summers Die

_The belief that I have any clue what I'm doing here is a vast kindness which I appreciate, but cannot even remotely take credit for. I know the basic structure of A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Other than that idea, which I believe I stumbled over in the middle of writing chapter 1, I'm absolutely rudderless. _

_I'm having fun, though. Hope you are too. As Howard...er, I mean, the synthesis of your higher, middle and lower brain that controls your dreams, AKA, your limbic system, would say, "Enjoy!" Then it would offer you a cherry. Because don't we all love cherries? - Lio_

* * *

Amy blinked, and studied the shoe in Penny's hands. There was something wrong with it. For one thing, it was round, and for another, it looked made for someone with feet the size of a hippopotamus.

Hippopotamus. Hippo. Hippos? _Hippy hippos are pretty hip_, Amy thought to herself. Then she furrowed her brow. _But what would they wear – bell bottoms or hipster glasses? Huh._

Amy took a good long look around the store. She was surprisingly unsurprised to find it was filled with lady hippos, some pink and some grey, although most of them were a lovely and vivid shade of purple, all sporting wispy summer frocks. They milled around the store very slowly, seeming to half waddle and half float, fixing expert and critical black eyes on the shoes at hand.

Amy was impressed by the way one managed to mince past the boot section on 5 inch "fuck me now" red heels. She crossed her arms over her stomach, studying the hippo's technique for possible tips on how to manage such a feat herself, but her thoughts were interrupted.

"How many bottles of wine do you think this could hold?" Penny inquired, holding up the pretty pink shoe. She turned it around a bit, and she and Bernadette fixed it with speculative eyes.

Amy squinted at the shoe, then noted seriously, "It's open toe."

Penny looked up and eyed Amy. Amy eyed Penny back.

"All the wine would spill out," Amy explained, using her hand to indicate the open toe.

Penny blinked, and inhaled as if she was going to answer, but then stopped and just fixed Amy with a look that Amy had come to know well, but couldn't quite define. She figured it was best to change the subject.

"So where are we?" Amy inquired, turning towards the store's windows. Out on the street, hippos walked past, each concerned with their daily routines and personal business. A young hippo, looking swank in his Brooks Brothers black suit, sauntered by, walking his pygmy goat on a diamond-encrusted leash. _As you do,_ Amy thought. _When you're a hip, young, hot hippo._

Across the street, Amy could make out the outlines of Caltech, but a bigger, taller, wider Caltech campus than she was used to. _Obviously, if you need to get the hippos on it_, Amy reasoned. A pair of sorority hippos swished by in designer jeans, Caltech sweatshirts, and leather satchels full of weighty books.

Penny and Bernadette came to stand on either side of her, and Penny tapped Amy's shoulder.

"Amy," she said, grinning widely, almost starting to giggle already. "Amy, look." She pointed out the window and said, "It's a hippo campus. Get it?" Her jaw opened in mock shock and wonder, and she gestured happily to the world outside the window. "Hippo campus. Hippo. Campus. Get it?" She and Bernadette started laughing, and fell into a red leather chair large enough to seat, well, a wealthy lady hippo. They curled up around each other, holding their stomachs and pounding their hands against the chairs leather seat.

"Ah," Penny sighed, "that's so much better than those physicist jokes about spherical chickens!"

Amy picked up a shoe at random, and started beating her head with it. After the fourth whack she stopped, dropped the shoe, and started rubbing her temple.

"Tsk," noted a blonde, lilac hippo who was wearing a sticker on her lapel that read: "Hello, I'm Huffy. Ask me about our 8 for 4 sale!" She gave Amy a dirty look, picked up the shoe, and carefully arranged it back on its plastic stand. She looked down at Penny and Bernadette and asked, "Don't the two of you have work to do?"

"You mean that Christmas Present Ghost Gift Wrap thingy?" Penny asked.

"Yes. That," the blonde hippo replied, rolling her eyes.

"Oh," Penny said. "No."

The hippo started to tap one delicate Jimmy Choo heel against the floor and asked, "Why not?"

"Well," Penny said, "Because we're having too much fun here in the hippocampus, and because–" She shifted and sat up higher in the massive chair, "I don't want to."

The hippo pointed her three dainty, well-manicured toes towards the door. "Go. Get on with it," she ordered. "We have nothing here that will fit your man feet anyway. I mean, literally. Everything in here is for hippos, not human beings."

Penny pouted, but she and Bernadette both rose and the three of them headed towards the door.

"Gosh," Penny whispered in Amy's ear, "Sales hippos sure are pushy!"

"Actually," Amy replied, "I think that one's Huffy."

"What?"

"What?"

Amy and Penny stopped and stood mirroring each other with identical puzzled looks on their faces.

"Okay," Penny said, seeming to concede a point that Amy didn't know she'd made, "I have an idea. ACTION!"

The air around Amy seemed to burst with a misty, rainbow-hued light, and Amy fervently hoped that this electrochemical pulse would put her out of her misery. However, in the next split second she had forgotten all of that.

* * *

She was late.

"Oh my ears and whiskers," Amy exclaimed, as she ran down the train station platform, holding up the frothy white hoop skirts of her wedding dress. "How late it's getting. I'm late, I'm late for sure."

The train station was cloaked in a whirl of smoke, and Amy ran past one car after another, looking for the one that belonged to her, but none of them did. In the mirror reflection of the train's windows, she could see that her fluffy white rabbit ears where standing straight up with anxiety. Finally, she came to the very end of the platform, and looked from the shiny blue caboose to the farm lands and rolling hills that lay in the distance before her in a neat, checkered pattern.

"Oh, I'll never get there now," she said to herself, turning this way and then that as her desperation rose past tolerable levels. "Oh dear, I'm so late."

As she said that, a tall, lanky figure dressed up immaculately in a black conductors suit and tie stepped down from the caboose's gold-trimmed steps. "May I help you, ma'am?" he said formally.

Amy turned and looked up into his solemn face and clasped her dainty hands together. "I'm looking for the time," she said.

"What do you need the time for?" the conductor inquired, seeming polite, but slightly wary. "Do you have some wounds to heal?" He tilted his head to inspect her.

"No," Amy replied, "I've had enough time to heal my wounds."

"Then what do you need the time for?" The tall conductor repeated.

"I need enough time for everything to happen – sooner or later – or there won't be any time for anything to happen at all," Amy answered, even as she felt the tips of her fluffy ears start to droop.

"Everything, and anything too? That's a very serious matter," the young train conductor said, his blue eyes filling up with concern. "For if everything doesn't happen in time, then nothing will happen, and no one wants nothing to happen. Nothing is really something you don't want to trifle with. I can deal with anything, but not nothing."

"So we need enough time," Amy said, nodding and agreeing with the sympathetic train conductor, "To prevent nothing, allow everything, and get anything."

"Yes, that would be something," the train conductor agreed, nodding his head. After a pause he noted, "You know, I think that I might be able to help you." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a gold watch that was connected to his vest by a clip and golden chain. "I have some time right here."

"Oh," Amy said, putting one hand over her heart, "I've always wanted a man with some time on his hands."

"I suppose it was just a matter of time before you found one," he answered, "seeing as nothing would matter before you did."

The train conductor held out his palm, the gold watch balanced on it. He studied the watch, and then looked at Amy's face. "I have to be sure that this time is your time," he said seriously, "otherwise it will just be borrowed time, and that has a way of running out."

With his free hand, the train conductor lifted the bridal veil from Amy's face, and took a long look at her.

"My clock's face is your face," he said in surprise, looking from the gold watch back to her. He reached out and took her hand in his, turning it over to examine, "Its hands are your hands. So this time must be your time."

Amy curled her fingers around those of the train conductor, and then reached out with the other hand to gently pluck the watch from his palm. She looked at the little clocks face closely, and then smiled.

"Now there's time for everything and anything," she said. "Now we have plenty of time."

Amy looked up at the man whose hand she held, and looked into his kind and serious blue eyes. "And you're the man I've always wanted," she told him, "the man with time on his hands." He smiled at her, and lowered his face to hers, and she realized he was going to kiss her. _Well_, she thought, _if she was going to make time for kissing,_ _there was no time like the present_, and she began to lift on tiptoe, closing her eyes and leaning forward.

"CUT!" Penny cried out via her megaphone. The air smarted sharply with the sound of angry feedback.

Amy was still leaning forward into the kiss, but now she met only emptiness. She toppled head over heels off the platform, which was suddenly devoid of train and conductor, and onto the tracks. "Ow?" She said, curling up in all of her lace and chiffon and miles of hoop skirts that were now dirty and smudged with coal.

Penny and Bernadette popped their heads over the edge of the platform, looking down at her.

Amy cast them an angry glance and asked, "What was that?" She pulled her veil and tiara from her head, and threw the tiara at them. Both of them ducked and the tiara flew out of sight, but suddenly came boomeranging back, landing in Amy's lap. She fixed it back on the top of her head, and scowled up at Penny.

"I don't know," Penny said, "I was just trying something." She raised the megaphone and put it to her mouth. Her voice bellowed out, "WARDROBE!" She looked around, and then hollered again, "WARDROBE." Amy shut her eyes as the voice seemed to beat down on her face.

"Um, Penny?" Bernadette said, leaning closer to her fellow blonde, "I don't think we have a budget for wardrobe."

"Impossible," Penny answered.

"I'm pretty sure," Bernadette answered.

"No, I would never have signed a contract without a wardrobe budget."

"It's not your contract," Bernadette answered, gesturing down at Amy. "It's hers. Right, Howie?" At that moment, Howard came sauntering down the edge of the platform, wearing his skunk suit and eating a banana. He put his arm around Bernadette's shoulders, and she seemed to light up.

"That's right, my little pussycat," he replied in his nice baritone voice. "Le meow," he purred in Bernadette's ear, and, after he and his bride shared a kiss, he turned to look at Penny. "I'm sorry, Blondie," he said, "but I'm going to have to relieve you."

"What do you mean – relieve me?" Penny inquired, crossing her arms over her chest, and tucking her megaphone under her arm.

"No, don't worry, I don't need any help here," Amy groaned, as she put her hands on the edge of the platform and began to pull herself back up, monstrous, dirty white wedding dress and all. "I'm good. It's just MY dream after all. Don't mind me."

Howard, Penny and Bernadette went on as if they didn't hear her.

"I mean that I'm going to turn the inherent responsibilities of this particular character in our little allegorical abstraction over to Bernadette," Howard explained.

"Why?" Penny exclaimed, even as Amy rolled over on the concrete and gasped out, "Water." Penny stomped her foot, and stuck a finger into Howard's chest, "You're FIRING me? You can't do that, Howard Wolowitz!"

"As the overall manifestation of Amy's limbic system," Howard said, hedging just slightly behind his wife, "I assure you that I can."

"I'm really thirsty down here," Amy said, as she continued to lie on the platform and stare up at the sky.

"Why did she put you in charge?" Penny said, "That's ridiculous! I won't stand for it. I'm her bestie. I'm the one she turns to for help and guidance. I'm the one who has turned her from a lonely, brilliant little neuro-something into a hip, popular, little," Penny paused, and went on tentatively, "...neuro-something." She recollected herself, flaring her nostrils and fixing Howard in an angry glare. "I'm the one who taught her how to open boxed wine, for goodness sake."

"And we all marvel at your ability to transform our nerdiness into coolness and imbue mass quantities of alcohol, Penny, but I believe that this little change up will be for the best!" Howard protested, opening his arms.

"Now look here, you creepy, perverted lit–"

"OH SHUT YOUR PIE HOLES, BOTH OF YOU!" Bernadette screeched, her tiny hands balling up into little fists.

"But–" both Penny and Howard said in unison.

"I SAID, ZIP IT!" Bernadette yelled back, shaking her fists at her sides. "I've had ENOUGH!" With a wave of her hand, Penny and Howard vanished into thin air with a pop, their jaws still hanging open as they completely disappeared. _Say hello to the tap dancing pigs_, Amy thought. _Or Kansas. You know. Whatever.  
_

Bernadette collected herself, smoothing out her cardigan and floral skirt. She looked down at Amy, and Amy looked up at her with wide, terrified eyes.

"Come on, honey," Bernadette said, holding out her hand. "Let's go get you some tepid water."

"Honestly," Amy said, slipping her hand into Bernadette's, surprised by the fact she was being lifted to her feet by a tiny woman with a grip of steel, "I'll take pure tequila at this point, if you have it."

"Anything you like," Bernadette said kindly. She put one hand in Amy's, and with the other, she snapped her fingers, and the world shimmered in another pulse of blinding white light.


	5. Dreaming as the Days Go By

Amy sat in the backseat of the taxi, her hands folded in her lap, eyes trained out the window. Bernadette sat in the front, driving, with a jaunty little blue cap on her head. The red lights of the meter showed that Amy currently owed over three million dollars for her fare.

She couldn't bring herself to worry about it.

Night had fallen, and Amy absently studied the neon lit streets of Pasadena roll by as they drove, noting the darkened storefronts, the separate pools of the sidewalks visible under the street lamps. The landscape ran by until they had possibly left Pasadena, but one town in California looks very much like the other, and Amy simply watched it all scroll past until they drove into the dark, and Amy could see nothing. She turned to look in front of her, and saw that the headlights of the taxi shone on the dark waves of the ocean, on which they were driving.

"Where are we going?" Amy asked, even as she turned from the window to look at the seat next to her. A pink birthday cake sat on the opposite seat, and Amy picked up a knife and started to cut it into 8 equal slices. The cake had been frosted with pink roses, and she was careful to slice around their edges, keeping them intact.

"The zoo. Sheldon and Leonard's apartment. The bottom of the beautiful briny sea. Oblivion. Take your pick," Bernadette replied, her eyes trained ahead on the ocean's dark waves.

"Sheldon's apartment," Amy answered, as she opened a wicker picnic basket by her feet, and took out fine porcelain plates trimmed with pink roses and gold leaves.

"No, take your pick of cake slices," Bernadette replied matter-o-factly, "Make sure you give yourself your fair share."

Amy looked over the slices of cake, and finally selected one with two pink roses on the edges. She put a silver fork on the plate, and passed it forward to Bernadette. The petite blonde took her hands from the wheel, leaned back in her seat, and accepted the plate. She cut into the soft vanilla cake with the edge of her fork, and took a bite.

The taxi continued on at its same speed, driving straight, as if guided merely by Bernadette's will.

Amy chose another slice with a tiny cluster of pink rose buds, and passed the plate to the golden koi who was now sitting in the opposite passenger seat. The fish gurgled at her in thanks, puckered its slimy lips, and sucked up the whole slice of cake into its mouth like a vacuum cleaner. It licked away some pink frosting from its lips.

Amy finally picked herself a slice of cake, the one with the largest pink rose on it, and put it on her own plate. She settled it in her lap and picked up a fork, but she found herself just staring at the rose, unable to bring herself to cut into it. It seemed too precious, somehow, to try to divide. She wished she could leave it whole and perfect forever, so instead of eating, she pulled a small calculator out of her bra, and began pressing the soft buttons with her thumbs, hitting various keys that had no markings.

Bernadette popped a bottle of pink champagne and poured a slender glass of bubbly, which she passed to the koi fish. "Grrgggrrrlllggrrr," the koi fish noted politely as it took the glass.

"Grrggrrrlllgrrgg," Bernadette gurgled back. The two clinked glasses, and each took a sip.

They watched Amy continue to tap away on her calculator, words and numbers blossoming on its little screen, telling her, no matter how many times she tried to add it up, that a cake minus three was a rose to the power of the King of Hearts. She tried again, and found that a heart times a thousand was a quarter of a Penny on the dollar. Growing increasingly frustrated, and even desperate, Amy continued to press the calculators buttons with her thumbs, asking it questions that seemed to bubble up from random recesses of her mind. She hit the button for equal, and found that a kiss divided by four was the coefficient of a pair of lips, that a Leonard plus seven then multiplied by a thousand milliseconds was a happy pair of slippers, and that no matter how many times you tried to divide a Sheldon, all you got was the letter Q.

The koi fish picked up the bottle of champagne and turned it upside down. Out poured thousands of little silver confetti Qs all over the remaining cake. At last, onto the pile of Qs dropped an engagement ring. Amy picked it up, pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, and turned it until the diamond embedded on the golden ring pointed down and to the right, like the letter Q.

"That's my cue," Bernadette said, taking the ring from Amy.

"A cue to do what?" Amy asked.

Bernadette didn't answer, she simply slipped the ring on her finger, and turned over her hand to admire the gleaming diamond. She picked up her plate, which was now devoid of cake, the only thing left from her slice the last rose of frosting and sugar. Bernadette took her finger and scooped it up, and placed it on her tongue. She sucked on it thoughtfully, and the fare meter turned back to zero again.

All three of the taxicab's occupants looked at the flashing red zeros on the dash of the taxicab, and Bernadette said, "You see, when you give your fair share you pay the fare." She chugged the last of her pink champagne, and the diamond on her finger pulsed with a final dazzle of brilliant white light, and Amy wondered if anything would ever add up properly again.

* * *

Amy and Raj each leaned on opposing sides of the large wicker picnic basket, the handle of which had hundreds of glossy bows tied to it. The strings were attached to a rainbow-hued army of balloons rising up above their heads. Amy glanced over the edge, watching the trees glide by below. She saw the shadow of the balloons and their basket rippling across the green fields in a way that made the earth seem like water. For awhile, Amy couldn't help but marvel of the beauty of it all.

Finally, she looked back across at Raj. He was dressed as a cowboy, with a faded and stained brown cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, a long leather duster flapping around his legs, which were decked out in walnut colored chaps, with fringe of course, pulled over his khaki pants. A pair of dark brown pointy toed boots adorned his feet. If it weren't for the maroon sweater vest he was wearing, that just happened to be neatly patterned with pink roses, he might have passed for an honest to God gunslinger.

He did have a pair of pearl-handled revolvers strapped across his hips, after all.

Raj gave Amy a silent smile, his lips remaining closed. He pulled one revolver out of its holster, cocked it, and used the tip to push back the brim of his hat so he could look at her squarely. She sensed he was waiting for something.

Amy looked up at the balloons overhead, all of which seemed to glow in the sunshine that streamed through them. She glanced back at Raj curiously, and back over the side again. They were still pleasantly drifting over the tops of trees and lush green fields, crossing over lakes and the occasional winding road. Slowly, she returned to contemplating Raj. He held onto his revolver with one hand, and with the other, showed her his hand, palm outwards, fingers spread.

"A hand," Amy guessed, but Raj shook his head and showed her his hand again. "Hello. Hi there. Bonjour," Amy said, but he kept shaking his head no. He wiggled his fingers at her once, cocking one eyebrow as he seemed to regard her knowingly. "Five?" she finally guessed.

Raj smiled and nodded, dropping the hand and reaching with it into his pocket.

Amy frowned and said, "Five – the sides of a polygon, the first good prime, the number of lobes in the brain. Frontal, parietal, occipital, insula, and the right and temporal lobes–who knows which one I'm in now. You know, I don't see why it's necessary–"

She stopped cold as Raj took a deck of cards out of his pocket, fanned them out in one hand, and extended them to her. The cards were oversized, with patterns of stars on the backs of them. After a moment's hesitation, she picked one, and glanced at Raj, and he gave her another look. "Oh," she murmured softly, drawing four more. "Five cards." Raj gestured for her to turn them over, so she flipped the top one.

"The Fool," Amy said, looking quickly over the picture of a man with a wooden staff thrown over his shoulder. He was walking along and looking at the sky with a stupid smile on his face. The words "THE FOOL" were printed in block letters on a scroll beneath him. At his heels gamboled a little gray dog in the act of barking. She looked up at Raj, who pointed the index finger of the hand holding the revolver back at her.

"Me? That's not me," Amy said, "I'm not a fool. Raj, I don't know what you're trying to tell me, but you know that tarot cards are absolutely ridicu–"

The shot rang out, loud and sharp, causing Amy's heart to skip a beat. Every balloon in the bullet's path burst, and the basket in which she stood gave a sickening lurch, sinking under her as if it was fainting at the sound of the gunfire. She grabbed the edge of the wicker basket tightly, catching herself and holding on for dear life. Finally, the basket reached equilibrium again, and she and Raj continued to bob along through the clear blue sky.

"Okay," she said, still clutching the supports of the basket's handle, "You win. I'm a fool. A foolish, fooling hooligan of a fully foolish fool. Happy?"

Raj holstered his gun, and gestured to her and the cards. He leaned back casually on his edge of the basket, crossing his arms over his stomach, silently waiting once again.

Amy looked back at the card, studying the colorful picture. "Alright," she said, straightening out her skirt as she contemplated the card. "I'm an educated, brilliant woman with a doctorate in neurobiology. I study the most complex organ, perhaps the most complex _thing, _for lack of a better word, in creation, on a daily basis. Analyzing a two dimensional picture is a mental exercise of those who major in the Humanities. If they can do it, so can I. No problem."

She stared at the card. It seemed to stare back. She saw a man walking across the edge of a cliff, a little dog barking at his heels. He carried all of his possessions tied to a wooden staff he carried slung over his shoulder at a jaunty angle, and his face was tilted up to the sun with the smile.

Amy looked up at Raj. "This is absurd."

Raj lifted the gun again, and Amy charged on, "But totally worth doing." She went back to staring at the card and its imagery, until the colors threatened to bleed together. She realized that Raj was starting to tap the pointy toe of his cowboy boot on the floor of their basket.

Amy spoke hastily, "The Fool. He is…delighted with the world, his face turned up to the sun in wonder, amazed and adoring of all that he sees, carrying all he owns, all he needs, with him." She paused, glancing at Raj, and then looked back at the card and went on, "But there's a cliff in front of him. The little dog is barking at him, trying to warn him that if he doesn't take a moment to look shrewdly at the world around him, he's in for a…. a fall."

Amy glanced over the edge of the basket tentatively, and then back at Raj. "This is me?" she asked, to which Raj nodded his head in the affirmative. She said slowly, "I have all I need, I am complete in myself, and the world around me is full of wonder and sunshine, bright possibilities and beautiful dreams. But…" She paused, and then went on slowly, "But there's a cliff before me. If I don't…if I don't…" Amy struggled with it, turning the idea around in her head, "If I don't take a harder and more careful look, I'm going to fall over the cliff. The dog is barking at my heels, trying to warn me. I'm being too…I'm being too idealistic. I'm on a journey, perhaps just the beginning, but I'm not being careful enough. About everything? About something in particular?"

She glanced askance at Raj. "That doesn't sound right."

Raj simply shrugged back at her.

Amy threw the card on the floor, saying angrily, "Can't you even talk to me in my dream?"

"Of course not," Raj answered, "You barely even know what my voice sounds like. How can I possibly talk in your dreams when you don't even know what I sound like when I talk in real life?"

Amy shrugged and sighed, noting wistfully, "Fair point." She slid down the inside of the basket, and curled up with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. Raj knelt down in front of her, and tapped the backs of the four cards in her hand that she hadn't looked at yet.

"No more cards," Amy pleaded, "No more of this game. No more of this dream."

Raj tapped the cards again, his brown eyes looking at her expectantly.

Amy took a deep breath, and flipped over another card. All it showed was a black letter Q on a white background. She glanced at Raj sidelong as she felt her stomach twist in knots. "What does this mean? Why are you doing this to me?"

Raj returned the gun to its holster, and tapped her cards again, as if there was something about them he knew that he hoped she would see.

Amy turned over yet another card, only to find another black Q on a white background. She flipped over the last remaining cards, and found each emblazoned with the same horrible Q. A knife seemed to twist within her, full of all she didn't know and couldn't know, and all she felt and didn't want to feel, and all she wanted and couldn't have, and all that she wished she could control but lacked the power to do so, until she felt she was going to be sick.

Amy lashed out at Raj with one violent sweep of her arm, knocking his cards out of his hands. They flew up in the air, twisting in the wind, hanging there unnaturally, turning and flashing in the light, every one baring a black Q. Everywhere she looked, a black Q seemed to stare back at her, stark and bare. Amy continued to bat her hands at them, hit at them, scream at them, fight with them, even as she heard Raj's gun fire off again and again. The basket lurched and sank, and the balloons popped and exploded in angry bursts, and each balloon belted the word "FOOL" at the sky, and Amy twisted against emptiness, her hands reaching out desperately, only to clutch nothing but air. She was sinking, she felt the bottom drop out from under her, a dog was barking shrilly, and the cards whipped around her, cutting a hundred times into her flesh, drawing forth blood and pain.

When her body hit the floor, it was the most painful impact yet.

It was the real one.

_Wasn't it?_

* * *

Amy lay on the floor of her bedroom. The light poured weakly through the blinds, indicating that the hour was painfully early. She rolled over, curled up into a ball, and started to cry.

As she did so, Leonard stroked her hair gently, and said, "Five fish, six fish, nine fish, three, the future isn't ours to know or see. Question your cue, see to you, to me. Simple to do, if I give you a clue."

"No more," Amy begged, crying softly into her hands. She continued to cry, and after awhile she realized she didn't feel her hair being stroked, nor was she naked, and the memory of why she was crying seemed to be fading away into a dense mist. She sat up, wiping the tears from her eyes with her fingertips, and looked around her room from the center of her bed.

The air smelled like bacon. She heard Howard, and he was singing, "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. Que sera, sera." The maroon pony trotted through the door, Howard riding it wearing just his boots and dickey, carrying a sizzling frying pan.

"Good morning, Amy," he drawled at her in that rich baritone of his, "Can I interest you in a side of bacon?"

"I'm not awake," Amy stated, looking around her room.

"Of course not," Howard replied, "That would be too easy."


	6. In a Wonderland They Lie

_Thanks to those who left comments. I greatly appreciate knowing what people think of this madness. - Lio_

* * *

"You're fighting me," Howard said.

Amy curled up cross-legged in the center of her bed, dressed in her flannel PJs. Howard slid off his maroon miniature pony, holding the skillet of bacon in hand. He walked over, his cowboy boots making a muffled clunk against her rug, his maroon dickey the only piece of clothing he was wearing. Amy averted her eyes, even when she felt the weight of Howard's body as he sat on the edge of her mattress.

"I need you to work with me, Amy," he said, and something in his tone made her turn her head to look at him. He actually sounded stern.

"I want to wake up," she told him, careful to keep her eyes on his face.

"Well, if wishes were trees we'd live in stone houses," Howard said with a frown. "So I think you're shit out of luck. However, I am impressed that you managed to get yourself back in some clothes and into your own bedroom. I wasn't expecting that."

Amy lifted her chin and drew back her shoulders, feeling pleased with herself. She even smiled a little. "I did?"

"You did." Howard was still frowning. He helped himself to a piece of bacon. "However, you struggled against Raj so hard that you actually managed to throw yourself out of your own bed this time. You're going to have a nasty bump on the back of your head tomorrow morning."

Amy reached up to touch the back of her head gingerly, trying to feel for it, but couldn't locate any nodule nor feel any pain.

Howard actually rolled his eyes at her, admonishing, "You're still dreaming, Amy, of course you can't feel anything. Now, work with me here." He finished his strip of bacon, and while he was chewing it, he reached under his dickey and pulled out a white card with a black Q printed on it. He showed it to her, and Amy reached for it, but he snatched it back just before her fingers could reach it.

Compelled by an urge beyond her control, Amy lunged for the card again. Howard sprang up from the bed, and held it just out of her reach. She leapt from the bed, and clutched at the card, and this time managed to pluck it from his fingers. Yet, even as she took that card, he pulled another one from the maroon fabric over his throat, and taunted her with it, dancing backwards in a grotesque naked dance, towards his shaggy little horse. Amy followed, scrambling across the corner of her bed, determined to pluck this Q card from his hand as well. Just as he reached his horse, Amy managed to grab the edge of the second card, pulling it away, but Howard simply swung his leg over the pony and pulled out yet another card that Amy had to have.

Again, Amy reached for the card, which Howard shifted to his other hand and lifted high over his head. Amy lifted on tiptoe, trying to reach it, but even as her fingers brushed its edge, Howard caught her elbow and pulled her ungraciously over the rump of his pony. Bellowing a mighty, "Yee haw!" Howard kicked the little horse's sides with his heels, and Amy was swept away on a bumpy ride, clutching 3 cards to her chest even as she felt herself losing her balance. On the third bump she felt herself bucked right off into space, and braced herself for a horrible impact.

It never came.

* * *

Amy had always been moved by the ways of logic and reason more than beauty, or at least that's what she liked to believe. Nevertheless, she had always had a secret fondness for looking at light through things that were delicate and diaphanous, like the way she could position a goblet of red wine in front of a candle on the table, the light alone creating a ruby, a jewel of translucent red, that glowed from deep within the glass's depths. Or the way sunlight in the late afternoon caught the hair of passing strangers, if you were sitting in the right place and looking the right way, so that it seemed the sun illuminated a secret halo that everyone possessed and didn't even know they had. Shift your position, and the halos and rubies would vanish, it was only the light that showed you they were there, only the light that shared that secret with you, if you knew how to look at things from the right angle, at the right time.

The canopy bed was draped with all sorts of translucent cloth in bright pinks and reds and oranges, ornately patterned, trimmed with gold, like the cloth women from India used to wrap themselves up with in elegant saris. The sunlight shone through them, making the draped, long lines of fabric glow like an exotic sunset. Amy lay against the bright pillows, and Ricky hopped onto her hip and offered her a single grape. Amy took the grape from Ricky's fingers, and stretched out, naked and relaxed.

Ricky chittered loudly, demanding as usual, issuing forth a stream of commands in his own language. From over the edges of the bed streamed more tiny little monkeys, each carrying a grape, all of which they laid at her elbow before bouncing away, until Amy was practically swimming in grapes of all colors. She took a bite of one, feeling refreshed by the taste. The soft beating of a drum started up. Amy looked around to find she was in the middle of a savannah of golden grasses, rocky outcroppings, and small, strange, twisted trees.

And Raj was doing Salome's dance of seven veils with a prancing entourage of monkeys following and twirling seductively around his feet.

Raj moved far more sensuously than she would ever have believed he could, shedding blue and gold veils slowly as he went, until he wore only one from a golden belt at his waist. He stepped up onto the mattress and strutted down its length, draping a green and gold veil across her body as he went. He circled her once, until the last bit of the veil fell from his fingers and fluttered down over her face.

Then, Raj leaned up against a bedpost and snapped his fingers.

At this command, monkeys frolicked in circles and spirals around him, dancing with joy and agility. Amy watched them in wonder and started to laugh, and the little animals took the edges of the green veil that covered her body in their hands, bouncing this way and that in a wild dance around her, until Amy found herself spun up in a perfectly fitted sari that draped over her shoulder and skimmed the tops of her breasts. A pair of monkeys piled up her hair and pinned it with golden and emerald combs to the top of her head. The monkeys dropped soft kisses on her cheeks and shoulders, and reached around her face to place the grapes in her mouth, feeding her lavishly between her giggles until Raj snapped his fingers again, and they all hopped away, vanishing over the edges of the bed and into the golden grass that grew long and tall across the savannah.

Amy looked up at him and smiled, noting, "To my great surprise, that did not make me want to gouge my eyes out."

The dusky skinned man said nothing, but knelt beside her, passing her a large goblet of red wine. She held it upwards to the light, looking at the red ruby that glowed in its depths. She didn't object as Raj gently pulled the three cards she still held in her fingers away from her. He took another from his belt, and snapped his fingers upwards and with a flicker, seemed to draw a fifth from thin air. Amy took a sip of her wine, watching Raj intently over the rim of her glass. As before, he held up his hand, fingers outstretched, and Amy smiled slightly and said, "Five."

Raj nodded and gave her a smile. He curled up cross-legged on the bed next to where she lounged on brightly colored pillows, and showed her the 5 cards on which a black Q was printed on a white background. Amid all of the color and light, they looked even more stark and generic than ever. Raj turned them over, and seemed to shuffle them, twirling one in his fingers, and then moving it back into his hands with the rest, until after turning them and pulling them apart and putting them back together several times like a magician, he turned over just one card and showed it to her.

Amy looked at the card for a long moment, and then reached over to take it from Raj's hand. She turned it over curiously, and confirmed it was only one card. She looked back at the card itself, and a picture of Sheldon looked back at her.

"When you divide a Sheldon," Raj said, "you only get questions. But every question you ask, he's the answer. So why do you ask when you already know?"

Amy blinked, and looked up at Raj with wide eyes. He looked back at her very seriously, and then reached out and ran his fingertip down the length of her nose, and rested his fingertip on her lips, keeping her silent.

"I can't show you the future, for the future isn't written yet. However, I will tell you to stop looking for Sheldon's cues, and instead find your own, and act on those. Answer your own questions, act on your own cues, and when you do, you'll find that all the time you've spent searching for him hither and yon, he was following right behind you all along."

Amy blinked again, her mouth dropping open little in surprise. If she could have thought of words to say she would have spoken them, but before she could wrap her mind around what Raj meant, he had leaned forward and placed his warm lips to hers, and kissed her in a gentlest way she had ever known. She closed her eyes, and let the warmth of his kiss, the taste of the ruby red wine, and the heat of the savannah's sunshine envelop her entirely.

And in that warmth, she fell asleep.

Or so it seemed.

* * *

The flash of light from Bernadette's diamond sparkled again in the darkness of the taxi cab. Amy admired it from the back seat, even as the gleam of light died and Bernadette dropped her hand. Howard was driving, and Bernadette sat next to him in the passenger seat, riding shot gun, though she turned and tossed one elbow over the back of the seat to look at Amy.

In the backseat, next to Amy, the little pygmy goat was curled up around the remains of the pink, rose frosted cake, and it nudged the plateful of cake in her lap over to one thigh so it could rest its head on the other. Amy stroked the goat's head with one hand, and it bleated up at her sleepily.

Amy shifted the plate to the side, picked up her fork, and cut into her own piece at last. The cake tasted sweet and sugary, of course, but Amy liked it. She reached over to pick up a clean fork, and carefully lifted the big pink frosting rose off the top. She offered it to the goat, who looked up at her with its dewy blue eyes, and then nibbled down the rose, fork and all. The goat put its head in her lap, sighed, and seemed content to go to sleep.

"Who's a good insular cortex?" She murmured to the goat, gently stroking its head. She looked at the little black box on the dashboard of the taxi, and watched it spool over to the number 0,000,000,001.

"Where do we go from here?" She asked.

Howard and Bernadette exchanged a look, and smiled. Bernadette lifted her hand and placed it on the nape of Howard's neck, and the diamond on her fingers gave one flash of light more brilliant and blinding than all the ones that had gone before.

When the light died down, Amy was driving the taxi on her own, driving over the dark waters of the ocean. In the passenger seat, the little pygmy goat sat on its haunches, wearing a pink rose tucked behind his ear. He was staring straight ahead, intent and focused, but gave her a brief glance. He shifted his weight a little, and complained, "At the very least you could imagine I'm wearing a seat belt. You should never compromise on vehicular safety, no matter where you're driving. What if we happen to run into a blue whale who isn't watching where he's going?"

Amy smiled a little, and pressed slowly on the brake. She leaned over, and brought the seat belt across the goat's chest, and secured him into place. The pygmy goat looked over her work, pressed a little against the belt, and finally looked mollified once it seemed to hold. "Thank you," it bleated at her, trying it's best to sound dignified.

"You're welcome," Amy said kindly, even as she spun the steering wheel, gently pressed down on the accelerator, and turned her taxi back for home.

* * *

_The poem (Hint: try typing a chapter title into Google and see what you find) has 15 more lines, but I think the next chapter is the last._

_That is, until Amy goes to sleep again. Another dream, another story._


	7. Lovingly shall nestle near

All night long, at least in her dreams, Amy had been hopping in and out of various beds, in various states of undress, never quite arriving at the destination where she wanted to go. Finally she was in the driver's seat, her hands on the steering wheel, speeding across the waves of the dark, desolate ocean with a pygmy goat, who had a pink rose behind his ear, sitting safely strapped into the passenger seat.

_Nothing nonsensical about this,_ she thought, adding for good measure, _can you hear me, Howard? Are you still there in my amygdala? _

Silence answered. Perhaps he, and everyone else, had been banished for good. Maybe her prefrontal cortex had managed to kick in, somehow.

Suddenly, thoughts bubbled up from various recesses of her brain in a singsong voice, chanting,_ Banished? Famished! One cake, two cake, three cake, four – all good girls are not a bore! One fish, two fish–STOP IT!_ Amy yelled from one part of her brain to another, _concentrate. No reason to have a Battle of the Amygdala right now, I have better things to do. Such as taking a left turn at that buoy up ahead._

Amy turned the steering wheel, and the taxi made a left over the darkness of the vast ocean. Even more than ever, her heart had a destination in mind. Oddly though, she found that she was no longer in any hurry to get there. She thought of the train conductor and his pocket watch.

"He gave me time," Amy murmured aloud, "plenty of time. His time." She furrowed her brow as she thought about that more, driving by the buoy as it tossed on the waves of the ocean and emitted one lonely, deep peel of its bell. She felt warmth and gratitude welling up inside of her. "He gave me his time," Amy whispers to herself, and even as that realization hit her there was a pulse of white light again, a gentle one. When the light cleared, Amy found herself in her lab.

She sat perched on her usual stool, the dark slate of the lab table before her, a veritable mad scientist collection of Brunson burners, metal stands, and glass beakers all holding fluids of multiple colors in front of her. _It seems I'm working through quite the experiment,_ she thought. The air felt cool and smelled fresh, which wasn't surprising, as her lab had repositioned itself in the midst of a dark forest with thick foliage overhead.

Amy turned to trees and said, "I can't see the forest for the sake of you. Could you please move back and give me some room? I'm working on something important here and I need to think."

All the trees suddenly slouched over grumpily, and some bent their branches and set them moodily on the torso of their trunks. Their leaves rustled out an annoyed complaint, but after having vented their feelings on the matter, they slowly receded backwards, stomping off sulkily. They kicked up clods of dirt in their wake, but the earth resettled itself, appearing undisturbed as it sprouted long soft grass dotted with ox-eyed daisies and clover. Finally, Amy found herself and all of the fixtures of her lab in the epicenter of a round meadow surrounded by tall trees that turned to each other and began jerkily gesturing their branches between each other and then towards her, each movement emoting the sentiment, "can you believe the nerve! What a–"

Amy deliberately turned her back on the trees and averted her eyes to her lab table and apparatus.

_It's not the first time I've been talking about behind my back,_ Amy thought, _and it won't be the last._ She refocused on her equipment and thoroughly ignored the conniving conifers.

Her lab – her place of power – was precisely as she remembered it. A chemical problem lay assembled before her, waiting to be solved. Thoughtfully, Amy reached out and turned a knob on the apparatus in front of her, causing one vial to slowly drip pink fluid into a little sieve with mesh as delicate as filigree. She measured out powders in spoons and liquids in small eye droppers, and in the hissing flicker of the Brunson burner flames, different chemicals started to bubble and burst, mixing with a fizzle, and slowly one distilled liquid dripped through various vials until a large beaker began to fill up with something thick and purple that smelled floral and sweet.

After taking a deep breath and watching the beaker fill with plum-colored liquid, Amy skeptically, almost reluctantly, looked over at the little goat contentedly grazing on the grass. The goat lifted its head to look back at her, and then came prancing over merrily as if it knew it was wanted. She plucked the pink flower from behind its ear, and took a moment to look into the fresh face of the rose that was still kissed with dew, still fresh and young and innocent.

"The heart," Amy said, plucking two outer petals and placing them into a glass vial. She turned up the heat of a burner, the flame leaping higher with a hiss. Using an eye dropper, Amy added a few drops of sugar water, and then let the confection melt and slowly turn to tiny pink crystals. Amy looked at her watch, and when the fourth hand ticked past the word "Done," she turned down the heat, the flame this time emitting a little hiss of protest.

"I know, you just want to burn all day, don't you? Burn it all," Amy said to the flame, as if she understood.

She picked up a delicate brush, inserted it down the length of the tube, and gently swept the crystals into the large glass master beaker. As the crystals joined the mixture, they turned the purple liquid a vivid shade of fuchsia. Amy tapped the brush twice against the edge of the beaker, and then swirled the mixture with the brush three times counter clockwise for good measure. _Just like the Half Blood Prince,_ she thought to herself. _Every detail counts._

Satisfied with the shade of the mixture - she was sure it seemed just right - Amy reached out for the champagne bottle and turned it over, letting a cloud of confetti made of tiny silver Q's fall into the beaker. "All of the doubts" she said, "That come when we question ourselves and the world around us. There are no answers without questions, but sometimes it's okay to let all of it go. Accept the world for what it is. Because it's okay to be foolish sometimes." These, too, melted into the liquid, turning it silver.

She looked to the goat again, and it coughed once and brought up a bright gold watch. Amy took it gently from his mouth and turned it over in her palm again to study it. Her face was reflected in the glass surface, and she smiled slightly back at herself before straightening her spine self-consciously and glancing sidelong at the goat. The goat merely blinked back at her.

Turning the watch over one more time, Amy noted the inscription on the back, a simple engraving of the initials AFF and SLC with the infinity symbol between them. After a pause, she picked up a pair of scissors and a sheet of gold plastic, cutting out a rectangle about the size of a credit card. She took a metal stand and fastened a small vice clip to it. She fastened the rectangle of gold plastic securely in the clip and picked up the watch again. Turning the watch over, she held it aloft and began to wind it, slowly but evenly rotating the dial. Like little grains of salt shifting through a shaker, so do tiny golden flecks float down from the watch, landing on the card and melting into it. Each little fleck emits a tiny note as it does so. _What is built to music is therefore build forever,_ Amy thought as she fell into a reverie. She couldn't be sure quite how long she spent rotating the dial, lost in the song of time, but she knew when she was done. Inspecting her work, she saw that the card was indeed a credit card, emblazoned with his name in raised gold letters, and simply stamped with the number 73. Amy released the card from the vise clamp and dropped it into the beaker. She and the goat watched as their time melted away into the liquid, turning it gold.

"Now," Amy said carefully, clearing her throat, "Cherries." She picked up a wooden bowl and the yellow fruit sitting beside it, adding, "And a banana." The goat made a slightly strangled noise, and Amy added, widening her eyes innocently, "What? It's just for taste!" Amy looked at the goat sidelong, and it looked back at her sternly before snorting and rolling its eyes as if to say, _Oh, go on then. _

A hedgehog waddled forward on her lab counter, and Amy gave it a stern look. "Did you eat my fishy?" she inquired.

The hedgehog simply burped, the spasm of his body causing a few quills to shake loose.

Amy sighed, "You did eat my fishy. Poor fishy - he had a nightmare about you, you know."

The hedgehog curled up into a ball and rolled away without a word. Amy decided to name him Hogesh Koothraquilly.

Amy picked one up one of the quills the hedgehog left behind and used it to pit the cherries, putting the stones and stems aside. She placed the meat of the fruit into a wide pewter goblet. She peeled the banana, using another quill to split it down the center before adding it to the goblet also. Taking a few vials from their metal stands, Amy splashed the mixture with a dollop of cream and a jigger of brandy. Last of all, Amy picked up a box of matches. With a flick of her wrist she lit one, looking at the goat cheerfully as she announced, "It's like a Jubilee!" She dropped the match into the goblet, and the entire mixture blazed upwards; exploded with a pop of fire and flash of smoke. When it burned down, there was a ruby egg left in the pewter basin. Amy plucked it out, cracked it against the edge of the beaker, using both hands to pull back the delicate shell and allow the golden yoke to fall into the master beaker. It all melted away, leaving a heady aroma.

Last of all, Amy took a yellow balloon, held it over the beaker, and then used a needle to pop it. Whatever came out could not be seen, but the golden liquid turned as bubbly and translucent as champagne. Amy looked at the goat, and then gestured to the beaker with a supple flicker of her wrist. "Helium," she said. The goat stared at the vial in confusion, and then looked up at her with bewilderment. She explained, "Lightness. So we don't take ourselves too seriously." She reached out and stroked the goat's stubbly, coarse hair, saying as she did so, "Laughter will mark the best of times, and get us through the worst of times. It's the most important ingredient of all."

The goat shivered in delight at her touch, and shrugged his haunches in apparent agreement, even as he ducked his chin with a hint of bashful delight. "What's life without whimsy?" he said in a voice that was suspiciously devoid of its former bleating edge. In fact, it sounded rather like a voice that Amy knows well, a voice Amy knew better than any other in the world. She'd know it anywhere.

She blinked a few times, and looked at the goat more clearly, opening her mouth to protest. The goat looked up at her sternly and said in that same voice, "Oh come on, Amy. You've known who I am all this time."

"Yes," Amy agreed, assuming a practical air, shrugging her shoulders as she conceded he was right. "I suppose that I did. Are you ready?"

"Affirmative," the goat responded, and Amy lifted the glass beaker and shook it, the liquid within frothing and then settling into a pale lavender shade that sparkled with bubbles. She poured out two vials, clinked them together herself, reasoning that the poor goat had no opposable thumbs and thus could not partake in congratulatory toasts. She held the vial out to the goat, who simply swallowed it whole as Amy shotgunned her own.

_Down the hatch,_ Amy thought to herself. _For better or worse.  
_

Almost immediately her whole body tingled and she began to grow. _This hurts,_ Amy thought, _this hurts like a mother._ She swore she could feel her very bones growing longer and thicker, feel the hair push violently through each pore in her head like a million tiny pin pricks, and her skin pulled tighter and multiplied into millions of new cells all at once. Just as she always remembered, it ached to grow up, ached in her very bones, ached within her very heart, ached deep in the recesses of her mind and soul, but there was never any way to turn back. It wasn't long before she and Sheldon were sitting beside each other in the meadow. Or more like on the meadow. Amy had her arms wrapped around her knees; he leaned back against a mountain range, shading his eyes as he looked up at a sun it seemed he could easily and pluck from the sky if only he would reach out his hand and take it.

A pair of giants, colossal figures, sprawled across a mountain range as it they were simply at home on the couch. Above them spun the starry expanse of the galaxy in all its milky wonder and sparkle.

"Thank you," Amy said simply to Sheldon, even as her eyes survey the earth from this high angle, taking in the sight of the landscape that stretches out from her feet. She curled up her toes away from the edge of the trees in consideration. _No need to make them any angrier with her, _she reasoned.

"You're welcome," Sheldon replied, turning his eyes from the heavens to look at her. After a moment to think over their conversation, he frowned and inquired, "Wait. Thank you for what?"

For a long time Amy was quiet, formulating her thoughts. Finally, she looked at Sheldon and said seriously, "Sheldon, do you remember our anniversary, when you quoted Spiderman and talked about the kind of man you wanted to become?"

Sheldon nodded back to her hesitantly, and Amy plunged on, the words tumbling out of her: "I love you," she said, "I wish I had told you that I loved you then – love you completely; heart, body, and soul. You think I just love you for your mind, but that's not true, that's not all it is anymore. I love your heart, which is loving and kind despite all of your selfishness, and I love your soul, which quests through the mysteries of space and time, always seeking out the truth." She took a deep breath, nearly shaking, but the crisp cold air of the mountain range seemed to calm her, so she continued, very gently, "I love your body, too. I want it – eventually. Someday I hope you desire me like that as well. But I know that you're not ready for that yet – I don't know if I'm even ready for that yet. But I have faith that someday you will be," she paused, and then said quietly, "that _we_ will be. We'll put our heart into it, and we won't question it, and we'll give it time and eventually…we'll grow into whatever we're meant to be, into the greatness of our potential. We'll prevent nothing, because nothing will come between us. We'll allow everything, for everything will happen between us in its proper time. I don't know precisely what will happen, or when, or how, but I'm ready for anything, as long as I'm with you."

Sheldon sat staring at her in his intense and focused way, but he said nothing.

After a very long pause, Amy added more tentatively still, "One day you're going to realize that you have so much more to offer than just your mind, and when you do, I'll be ready. I promise you that."

Amy and Sheldon sat in the sunshine, their backs up against the sky, staring at each other for a long moment. Tentatively, Sheldon reached out to enfold her hand in his, and they stayed that way for what seemed minutes, or hours, or perhaps an eternity, but within the moment Amy felt belonging, and love, and safety, and a sense of peace.

It was the best sleep she'd ever gotten.

* * *

When her eyes fluttered open, the room was quiet and still, the light weak and feeble. She'd woken up before the alarm clock, and rolled on her side to turn it off. She picked up her glasses from the bedside table and slipped them on as she happily pushed her feet out of the covers and wiggled her toes before placing them on the rug. Rising, she stretched and smiled to herself, feeling more alive than she ever had, as if she was glowing from the inside out, and she had figured out the secret of the meaning of life to boot. Parts of the dream stuck with her, and she looked around for her cellphone. Amy wanted to tell him all about it, tell him about her epiphany, tell him everything she'd learned and that she felt. She couldn't wait to share it with him.

Amy's stomach gave a low rumble, and she remembered that she left her cellphone out on the coffee table, meaning she forgot to plug it in to charge over night. She rushed into the living room and snatched her phone off the table, finding that it was, indeed, dead to the world. She took it into the kitchen and plugged it in by its cord, and then turned to open the fridge. Perhaps she'd tell Sheldon all of the details of her dream after a good, healthy breakfast. Her stomach gurgled again, and she began rooting around in her fridge, pushing aside several bottles of Yoo Hoo.

She'd never had a more persistent craving for bacon in her life.

* * *

Amy stood in her kitchen, up to her elbows in soapy water, with the frying pan in one hand and sponge in the other. She scrubbed away at the grease left over, and wondered if Sheldon wanted to go to the zoo today. _It had been awhile since she'd seen his koala face,_ she realized. The thought of it made her smile, and mentally she made a note to text him in a minute, when she was done with the dishes.

_There was something else she was going to tell him,_ Amy remembered. She paused, squeezing the sponge in her hand. The water squelched out between her fingers and dropped into the sink, bleeding away just like the memories of her dream.

_What did she dream about again?_ Amy wondered. She thought it was something important when she woke up, but now she couldn't remember much about it except a dancing hippo slapping her on the nose with a magic wand. _Magic wand_, she marvelled to herself, _obviously it's better if I just forget about all of that nonsense._ _  
_

Suddenly, Amy spun around to look behind her, alarmed by the sudden notion that all of her friends were in the apartment and that they could hear what she was thinking. _When you think inside of your amygdala, your amygdala can still hear you,_ she thought to herself as her heart thudded in her chest. She tiptoed out of the kitchen, and checked through her apartment for interlopers, finally emerging from her bathroom with a perplexed expression on her face as she wandered back into the kitchen.

Amy shook her head and loaded the dishes into the washer. _Get a hold of yourself, Amy Farrah Fowler,_ she thought. _It was time to focus on more practical matters._

And with that, Amy began planning out her day._  
_

* * *

Across town, in a sleeping mind, a ravishing, petite brunette, dressed in a demure floral dress and unbuttoned green cardigan, kept parading up and down in someone else's dream.

"She's the soul of the femme fatale in florals," he muttered to himself, unable to keep the begrudging admiration out of his tone. Propping his elbow on the arm of the couch and fanning his face with his hand, he turned to the chair beside him and noted, "really gets your heart rate going, doesn't it, Leonard?"

However, his bespeckled friend was not there. Instead, a tiny plastic figure, dressed in a blue Star Trek uniform, sat on the edge of the cushion, staring back at him with an unblinking, disconcerting gaze.

"Fascinating," Spock's voice echoed through the vaults of his mind. Disturbed, that mind woke suddenly, the doll's penetrating stare making him jerk straight up in bed, yelping out in desperation, "KHOLINAR!"

He took several deep breaths, panting desperately, eyes wide as his gaze swept the room for possible danger. Finding none, he exhaled and tried to reason his mind into relaxation. He reached for his cellphone in order to bid her good morning, muttering under his breath, "One of these days I'm going to figure out just precisely what that vixen has done to me, and when I do, oh yes, when I do..." He stopped, then continued on lamely, "Er, when I do..." His thumbs stop typing up his morning greeting to her as he tries to find a way to end that train of thought.

_Well,_ Sheldon reasoned, vaguely uncomfortable with with the sense that he had no idea what he was talking about, _I'll figure it out. Eventually. I'm super smart - just give me time. Eventually I'm going to figure it out.  
_

* * *

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you all allowing me the time to finish this particular train wreck. Now I can finally move on to what's hopefully bigger and better. Reviewing seems to be a dying art, so I greatly appreciate those of you who take the time to lend me your thoughts. Thanks again for making this a fun journey - I'll see you all again if Amy ever dares to have another REM cycle ever again.

Although I've been told since publishing this story that people are intrigued by Sheldon's dream. Perhaps the next 7 chapters will belong to him, and what goes on in the Beautiful Mind of Sheldon Lee Cooper. We'll see. I'll think about it. Just give me time.


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